Sandbox Symposium 2008

August 09 through August 10, 2008

LA Convention Center

Los Angeles, CA

Sandbox 08 builds on 07 success.

The second annual ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium was successfully held in co-
location with ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego. Its success builds on the premier
Sandbox and leads to another Sandbox to be held in 2008 along with ACM SIGGRAPH
in Los Angeles on Saturday, 09 August and Sunday, 10 August 2008.

Sandbox is an emerging conference that
focuses on innovations in video game theory and practice. The day-and -a-half
conference ran the weekend before SIGGRAPH on Saturday, 04 August 07 and Sunday,
05 August 07. "We are excited about how well the Sandbox 07 went," says Drew
Davidson, Sandbox conference chair, "it illustrates how we're providing a forum
for industry and academic professionals to discuss game design and development."
Attendees showed a strong interest in seeing this continue to happen and a
willingness to get involved to help make it so.

Alan Heirich,
Sandbox program chair, notes "in this second year we saw a focus on
rigorous technology innovations and insightful analysis of game design and
development issues." The program for Sandbox 07 included panels
on Open Source tools and Game Prototyping and sessions on animation, graphics,
game design and education. The IGDA also provided a special dinner panel
and IGDA members joined the festivities for Saturday evening. Keynotes by
Warren Spector of Junction Point (recently acquired by Disney Interactive
Studio) and John Klima of the Rhode Island School of Design head the conference,
which is as diverse as its program.

There were around 200
attendees with a mix of developers, academics, artists and students, as well as
international virtual attendance via online Breeze streams. This diversity was
also reflected in the presentations, papers, panels and posters. Papers were
selected through peer review to form a solid track. The high quality was
reflected in the selection of two best papers; " WiiMedia: motion analysis
methods and applications using a consumer video game controller" by Akihiko
Shirai, and "Journey of Discovery: The Night Journey Project as Video/
Game Art" by Tracy Fullerton, Todd Furmanski, Kurosh Valanejad.

Throughout the event, a carnival room hosted poster sessions and video game
tournaments. Industry support helped make this a great part of Sandbox. Sony
Computer Entertainment donated PS3s and games and Microsoft also supplied games
for the tournaments and prizes were provided by X-Gaming. Academic institutions
also showed their support for Sandbox. The ETC at CMU, Game Design and
Development at RIT, as well as A K Peters, all supported this year's Sandbox.
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"ACM SIGGRAPH is proud to sponsor Sandbox," says Alyn
Rockwood, Vice-President of ACM SIGGRAPH, "it is successfully responding
to the needs of a rapidly growing field and we're looking forward to Sandbox
continuing as an annual event that serves as a sounding board and catalyst for
innovations in video game design and development." Sandbox is running
video game tournaments throughout the week of SIGGRAPH for all attendees.

"Thank you to everyone who supported this event and made it such a
successful one," adds Davidson, "and Sandbox can only happen with the great
group of people who got involved. The strong executive committee, the reviewers,
the volunteers, the presenters and the attendees all helped make it succeed and
I'm excited to see how it grows in the future." Dave Schwartz is
chairing Sandbox 08 and is looking to make it even better.

For
more information on Sandbox 2008 and how to get involved, please visit: http://sandbox.siggraph.org/ and
email Dave Schwartz (dee eye ess [at] it [dot] rit [dot] edu). Thanks!